Welcome to our May/June 2016 issue. For the second straight year, Artscope publisher Kaveh Mojtabai will be heading to Art Basel Switzerland (which takes place from June 16-19), where we’ve once again been selected to have our magazine displayed in its collective booth among the world’s best art publications — and he’ll make a presentation on the magazine to the Basel staff. We’re proud of this honor and have worked extra hard to put together an issue that would represent New England’s visual arts scene at this elite event..

This is just one of the many ways that we continue to strive to support the region’s art galleries, museums and exhibitions. Right after we went to press, Mojtabai was off to jury Massasoit Community College’s Annual Student Juried Show (taking place on May 16 at the Akillian Gallery as part of the school’s Annual Arts Festival) and we were a sponsor of the Society of Arts and Crafts’ CraftBoston Spring Show at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts.

As this issue hits the streets, we’re a media sponsor for the Copley Society of Art’s Fresh Paint Gala and Silent Auction on May 5, and two days after that, at the Umbrella Community Arts Center in Concord, Mass.’s Artrageous “Storytelling Through the Arts” benefit on May 7. We’re doing the same for the Guild of Boston Artists’ Handel & Haydn Society Concert on May 18, the Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s Gala on May 22 and the Cambridge Arts River Festival on June 4 on the waterfront alongside Cambridge Parkway between Edwin H. Land Boulevard and the Lechmere Canal in East Cambridge, Mass.

Once again, we’re also a sponsorfor the 61st Annual South Shore Art Center Arts Festival on June 17, 18 and 19. We’re also partnering with the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown throughout their 2016 season, with the Newport Art Museum for their Beaux Arts Ball on July 2, the Ogunquit Art Association’s 65th Annual Auction on August 6, the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen 83rd Annual Craftsmen’s Fair at Mount Sunapee Resort August 6 through August 14, and in the fall, the Arlington International Film Festival.

We’re also a media sponsor for the greatly anticipated Worcester Art Museum’s “Meow” exhibition that opens on May 20 (we’ll be reviewing the show in our next issue) and the “Photo-Secession: Painterly Masterworks of Turn-of-the-Century Photography” exhibition currently on view at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts at Springfield Museums, which I had the pleasure of reviewing for this issue.

If you can’t join us and make it to the above, make sure you check out our report from many of these events and openings on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; all of our social media postings are live streaming and accessible through the Artscope Universe app that’s downloadable at app. artscopemagazine.com.

In this issue, we take an in-depth look at two artists we’ve been quite fond of for some time. Marguerite Serkin has the
visit of a lifetime with Varujan Boghosian at his New Hampshire home in advance of the four exhibitions celebrating his 90th birthday at the Berta Walker Galleries in Provincetown and Wellfleet. J. Fatima Martins visited the magical workshop of David A. Lang in Natick, Mass. to see his “Journey …” installation before it was transported to the Boston Sculptors Gallery for its May showing.

We always look forward to the International Encaustic Conference each June, and Marcia Santore visited with Debra Claffey, whose work will be included in “The Mark of the Brush” exhibition at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill as part of this year’s event; Claffey’s work can also be seen in the current “Beneath the Surface” show at the Saco Museum in Maine.

Elizabeth Michelman took on multiple assignments, including two exhibitions at the Groton School (an Ellen LeBow solo show and its “Under, Above, Everywhere: Celebrating Materiality” group show), Joan Baldwin’s June solo show at the Kingston Gallery in Boston’s SoWa District and “Compelling Progressions,” a great encaustic show featuring Pat Gerkin, Donna Hamil Talman and Charyl Weissbach at the Art Complex Museum that’s closing soon after this issue arrives (on May 15), so you might want to put that one on the top of your list of shows to see.

There are a number of major international and historical shows featured as well: Suzanne Volmer reviews the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s “Megacities Asia” exhibition; as only he can, James Foritano interacts with the “Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television” at Addison Gallery of American Art; and on the art form/movement’s 100th anniversary, Kristin Nord shares her highlights from “Everything Is Dada” at Yale University Art Gallery.

Nord also visited with ceramic tile artist Elizabeth MacDonald, who has two Connecticut exhibitions opening in June: “Nature’s Patina” at The Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury and a retrospective at the Brookfield Craft Center. There are more great hand-made works to be seen at the Lexington Arts & Crafts Society’s 9th Biennial State of Clay exhibition that’s previewed by Taryn Plumb.

It’s been a goal of ours to have a collector’s feature; thanks to Donna Dodson, this issue opens with her “cornering” of Massachusetts-based art collectors Liz Augustine and Robert Praetorius. We hope her interview will encourage and assist others interested in building their own collections.

We welcome Ali Russo — who has been participating in our intern program through Lesley University — to these pages with her review of the “Nowhere Everywhere” exhibition at the Thompson Gallery at the Cambridge School of Weston. And a belated welcome back to Molly Hamill, whose preview of Patrick O’Donnell’s “A Cubist Chick Ate My Baby” show at the Zephyr Gallery led to that great image you see on our cover.

As we head into summer with this expanded issue, I hope in the months ahead you’ll be able to see many of the shows and artists featured, and that we’ll cross paths with many of you as you explore your New England Art Wanderlust.

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